A new type of task is available in Asana. Meet Approvals!

[Bastien_Siebman]

Nice @Paul_Grobler !
@Joanna_Yiptatchung nope, Business and above

[Sara_Westland]

Pardon my blunt comment, but this honestly feels like the Asana team released a half-baked feature. It would almost be better to remove it and re-release it once it actually functions.

I am also interested in seeing actual use cases, because I want to know how this got approved to be pushed live.

[Bastien_Siebman]

Nobody’s forcing you to use this feature and many people would rather have it now at this stage than wait longer

[Brenda]

According to my version, Approvals are only available to Premium subscribers. Is this the case?

[Phil_Seeman]

Actually they’re only available to Business and Enterprise subscribers, not Premium.

[Brian_Massey]

Thanks @Paul_Grobler. That’s the process we’ve discovered works best as well.

[lpb]

Just wanted to reiterate my earlier post with some approaches since I think a number of folks missed it the first time around:

A new type of task is available in Asana. Meet Approvals!

I haven’t used Approvals much yet, but… What initially occurred to me upon hearing that all approvals mark the task complete was: So then I would want the approval to be a separate task–not apply on the actual work task itself And maybe this added approval task could be 1) a subtask of the actual work task to keep them together (and facilitate multiple approvals should the need arise), or 2) a follow-up task And/Or make the actual work task dependent on the approval. Just thinking out loud, …

Though @Phil_Seeman noticed, and it’s consistent with Asana’s intent as explained by @Joe_Trollo:

A new type of task is available in Asana. Meet Approvals!

@lpb and @Alex_Graniere, Yes, exactly! I didn’t get that distinction at first, but that’s key to how this feature was designed to be used. As Joe Trollo expressed it in the API forum section: The approval task represents your work reviewing some other task, and when you’ve reviewed it and declared it needs changes, your review is complete. (Later the task might be uncompleted to represent that there is new review to do, or a new approval task might be created and assigned.)

Thanks,

Larry

[Cally_McIntyre]

I like the new Mark for Approval - but I haven’t found a way to change people’s “Reports” that have already been set to find approvals to the new way.

E.g
We made a search report for our Managers to easily find tasks assigned to them that has been marked with the custom field “Approval Stage” that is set to “Ready for Review”.

Does anyone have any work around’s?

[Collin_Vine]

I feel the same way as @Sara_Westland. This feature is woefully incomplete and, frankly, just bad. It feels like the product team doesn’t understand approval flows even in the slightest.

[rodrigo.scl]

Approvals is such an important feature, but doesn’t make any sence that the tasks that needs changes or were rejected disappear as if they were finished.
Those types of not approved tasks should be highlighted in a different way, so the person responsible of gets their attention.

[Sarah_Crammond]

I came here to check if there was a way around “Request changes” changing the task to complete but it would appear not. Very disappointing as it seems like a huge oversight. At least there’s a lot of other people giving the same feedback so hopefully Asana will get this updated ASAP. It’s pretty much un-usable for us until this change is made.

[Manzur]

Agree.

And not Agree with Bastien’s comment.

[Sara_Westland]

Really? because it sure doesn’t sound like it. And I didn’t say anything that would imply I am being forced to use it…you’re just making things dramatic for…I don’t know why.

edit: yes, let release a product that is only partially functioning. They have other companies to compete with, releasing something half baked only hurts them. I don’t want a mostly finished car, or any other product, same goes here.

[Bastien_Siebman]

My point is that this is not a “mostly finished car” this is a scooter =)

[Marie]

Thank you all for taking the time to share your excitement as well as your feedback! This is our first shot at approvals and we’re aware there is room for improvement. In the meantime I would recommend casting your vote on this thread Approvals - Request change should keep the task incomplete - #2 by Marie and check out the tips I’m giving in this post. Using subtasks to ask for approval has proven to be super handy! I’m keeping a close eye on the situation and will keep you posted here as soon as I have further update!

[anon3815482]

It’s honestly been a bit of a pain trying to finesse my way around Approvals when working with the rules workflow.

I was working on a custom workflow where after a lead approved a particular task, the task got moved to another section. At that point, another rule would change the status of a custom field and THEN mark it as complete, as that is the final step of the process.

Logically speaking, just because a task or a part of a process is marked as “approved” does not mean that the task itself is complete. That just means that you have the “ok” to move forward.

The custom rules don’t create much flexibility for this. There’s not even an option for me to create a rule where once the item is marked as approved, I either create a new task or a subtask is created for me to move to a new section. It just wipes it out as “complete” and I don’t see it again. Not cool.

I really hope you all come up with a solution for this, 'cause…

[IvanStaykov]

We are using approvals as sub-tasks of the main task, especially if there are more people that need to sign-off on one thing. Unfortunately this way you loose the automation, but maybe a solution.

[Emily_Roman]

Thank you so much for your kind feedback @anon3815482, we’ll make sure to pass it on to the Team.

Since this update is now fully rolled out, I’m closing this announcement. If you have questions, please log them in integrations and if you have any feedback, you can create a thread in #productfeedback